Black Belt
by Isaac A. Drake
Summary: Koichi, son of Kiyo the Karate King, is finally allowed to set out on his pokemon journey after attaining black belt status at his father's dojo. Follow his adventure through Kanto and Johto to turn his and his pokemon's bodies into physical and mental perfection.
1. Restrictions

Author's Note: This isn't going to replace any of my other fics in the list, I just needed to test some writing styles and lore options out for further exploration in other fics. Intern/Champion's Legacy/Black Belt may eventually all be somewhat connected.

Chapter 1: Restrictions

I flipped myself back up onto my feet with a swift and fluid movement, ready to continue sparring with my father.

"Is that all you can dish out, old man?" I taunted, a cocky grin on my face that I knew he would hate.

"Hmph!" He grunted, "I don't know how I raised such an irreverent punk. At this rate you'll never have your first degree and be able to go on your journey."

I gritted my teeth, the old man knew how to hit me where it hurt, so I launched forward with a flying spin kick off my left foot.

And of course, Kiyo the Karate King caught my strike. But that was what I wanted to happen.

Using the momentum from my first kick I unleashed my chambered fist right into his disapproving face.

Or I was planning to, until he moved his head to the side so that I only grazed his cheek, then with another of his irritating clucks of disapproval he threw me across the mat.

I managed to partially flip in the air and use that to turn my fall into a roll right back onto my feet.

"Face it, Pa, I've been ready for my first degree black belt for a year! You're just holding me to a higher standard! Me and my tyrogue could have already been getting badges for months now!"

The look of rage on my father's face was priceless, and the sliding of the dojo door open cut off any response he may have had.

"Indeed, Kiyo, you were just telling me the other day that Koichi had been ready in all except his temperament for ages. You were in fact quite aggravated that he wouldn't 'shape up' in that regard."

A striking figure stood in the doorway, taller than my father, muscles that rippled and bulged showing the years of development fighting pokemon with his own body, and a messy and spiky mane of dark hair, only recently becoming streaked with gray, going down his back.

My favorite, and only, uncle, Bruno of the Elite Four.

My father sighed and relaxed his posture, "I wish you hadn't done that, Bruno. But the meowth is out of the bag I suppose," finally he turned to acknowledge my glare at my uncle's words.

"You've been ready for a while, kid. But you're a hothead and both your mother and I were worried that you were going to get yourself or your pokemon hurt doing something rash on the road if we let you go too early. So we decided to use the family tradition of only allowing children to leave on journeys once they got their black belts to keep you here a little bit longer so you could hopefully learn some restraint. We're both sorry we had to do it but-"

I decided to cut in, frustrated but not able to be as angry as I wanted to be, "But you thought it was the best for me," I rubbed my hands across my face in increasing frustration.

"Ra!" I yelled, "I want to be so mad at you both!" I complained as I set my shoulders back and stomped over to my father.

"But that would just prove you right, huh?" I said with a frown, "Well you bother better be making this up to me somehow! There's no way I can collect eight badges in the five months left of the season, so I'll have to just use this for training and getting a little ahead or head off to Johto."

Kiyo had the dignity to at least look a little admonished by me, but Uncle Bruno just started laughing.

"Well getting ahead isn't bad, kid!" I never saw him move but suddenly he had me in a noogie, "Hell, with the staggering of the competitions you could use the next three months to train up and catch a team and then hit Johto up with a good team and make it by their competition!"

As I tried to escape the headlock I contemplated my uncle's advice. The Kanto and Johto seasons were staggered so that the Kanto Indigo Plateau matches were at the beginning of summer and the Johto ones were at the end of fall. That would give me almost a year to get the Johto badges, and if I spent a few months here in Kanto while the season was still on the two or three badges I got would still be good for next season.

I could compete in Johto at fourteen and Kanto right before I turned fifteen. Not a bad plan.

"Uncle! Uncle!" Bruno released me and I jumped away, "Ha! I wasn't giving in! I just wanted to say that your advice sounds great! I'll take a few months here in Kanto to build up a team and then I'll head over to Johto and show everyone what the Saffron City Fighting Dojo is made of!" I jabbed the air a few times for emphasis.

And so over the next few days we got ready for my departure. The dojo had been doing well with my mother and Bruno's sister, Cyndyi, running management and classes fourth kyuii and below, while my father's junior dan ran the third kyu to first dan classes to help them with increasing their own dan. My father then had time to run the upper dan and combined human/pokemon classes.

It allowed us to take in exponentially more students than my father had had back when he and mom had gotten married. And even for the first few years I can remember before my mom got fed up and took over management.

It also allowed dear old mom and dad to supply me pretty well for the start of my journey. While I was starting 'late' compared to the ten year olds that are allowed to run around with starters from the regional professors, that was honestly not the norm. Most trainers got later starts, saving up money to buy a better starter than a local pidgey, saving up for good camping and hiking gear, and stuff like that. For me it was waiting until I was thirteen and a half and finally got my black belt. Though admittedly I had been given my tyrogue egg when I was ten and gotten my provisional trainers license that allowed me to own a pokemon and use it sparingly in training scenarios, such as at the dojo.

So I was going to be off to the races with a tyrogue rather close to evolving, a great multi-compartment storage bag, cases for berries and TMs, a mid-tier model Pokegear, a bunch of human and pokemon exercise equipment, a good rod I had bought with my own pocket money, and an older model pokedex that Professor Oak had sent my uncle in exchange for studying his Alolan Golem some.

My ceremony for promotion to first dan saw my mother and Bruno beaming from the sidelines while my father and his hitmonchan, the father of my own tyrogue, bestowed the black belts upon both me and Ajax, the aforementioned tyrogue I had trained up from an egg.

And with that I headed out of the dojo to start my journey, immediately going anywhere except the Saffron City Gym, because I'm not a suicidal magikarp willing to throw myself at a fearow's beak.

Pondering I took out the pokedex and Pokegear and scanned Ajax while flipping through the town map.

"Species: Tyrogue, the scuffle pokemon, this pokemon is always bursting with energy. To make itself stronger it keeps on fighting even if it loses.

This tyrogue is male, has the ability Steadfast, and knows the moves: Tackle, Fake Out, Foresight, Bullet Punch, and Mach Punch."

Nothing I didn't already know about Ajax, but hey, might as well get used to scanning every pokemon I see, right?

Now looking at the town map I knew the Magnet Train here would take me to Goldenrod when I was done with Kanto. But if I wanted to build up a team before leaving Kanto I should catch at least the other native fighting-types. Which meant I'd need a mankey, a poliwag, and a machop. Sure I'd take the evolved forms but the lower forms were easiest to find.

I could definitely find machop in the Rock Tunnel, mankey were all around Mount Moon as well as the entire western side of Kanto around Viridian and Pallet.

Poliwag though, could be found all over the streams and rivers of Kanto, particularly those flowing down from Cerulean and the mountains above it. Though apparently later in the year for spawning they migrated to only be around Cerulean itself and the area right below Victory Road. This time of year the closest place to Saffron they could be found is...there we go, Route 6, between here and Vermillion.

Hmm, perhaps not the best gym to have a go at if all I caught was a poliwag between here and there. But as long as they could learn some fighting moves I wasn't going to be too picky until I was building a final team.

Quickly I scanned through my resources for what pokemon were common on Route 6. Junk, junk, junk, hmm the occasional pidgeotto, growlithe, and jigglypuff? Those weren't terrible for covering some of the fighting-type weaknesses, as well as having some nice utility and training options. And apparently there were some rarer abra sightings as well. Unfortunately it was the wrong time of the year for the mankey troops that come through that same area, but all in all not terrible things that I could run into while fishing for a poliwag.

I stood up and stretched then motioned to Ajax, "Come on buddy, we're going south for a poliwag."

i Most frequent recurring name for the Battle/Crush Girl trainer class

ii Karate Ranks


	2. Small Victories

Author's Note: I definitely have specific influences with this character. He's a very specific kind of trainer. Not devoid of empathy like OG Paul but he values strength and determination a lot. If you can't tell the style I'm playing with is First Person to see if it can help me write better descriptions and the Lore I plan to look into and explore is fighting-types and later Aura.

Chapter 2: Small Victories

Route 6 was boring as shit. First of all the area immediately south of Saffron was just lightly wooded grassland with the road. I had Ajax Mach Punch a bunch of junk pokemon that got territorial but nothing yet had impressed me. Even the growlithe that had come after us hadn't known more than Ember and Tackle. Not worth the money for the pokeball.

Most of Ajax's training in the Dojo the last year had been on perfecting his inherited moves from his father, Kiyo's hitmonchan, Heracles. Mach Punch had been relatively simple for the little guy, an isolated burst of speed combined with a precise punch wasn't too out of the realm of instinct for a fighting-type pokemon, and especially not one that trained in structured martial arts as well.

Bullet Punch on the other hand had involved channeling steel-type energy into the punch to make it a pummeling iron fist that could break rock and ice in a single strike. That had only been perfected a few months prior.

I had never been so proud of Ajax as the day I saw his fist glow silver and saw him shoot forward with a flicker and shatter that boulder.

Regardless, we were still a few days from the best fishing pond where a few of the rivers down this way met before merging into one big one to run out into the Vermillion Bay.

And so it was about where Ajax and I were looking around for a place to camp for the night when we were approached by our first trainer.

"Is that a tyrogue?" A redheaded kid a year or so younger than me commented as he neared us, passing the opposite way we were going.

I nodded and replied, "It sure is kid, you looking for a battle or something?"

I was lucky that I wasn't starting my journey with a fresh pokemon. Otherwise I'd be looking to take a lot of beatings this late into the season.

The kid nodded, "Yeah! I was looking to take on that sweet fighting dojo up in Saffron for their next tournament where they give out the Brick Break TM! Practice on a fighting-type would be great."

I'm pretty sure my grin was feral, "Then you're in luck, both myself and this tyrogue trained at that dojo. Those tournaments are usually one versus one, that sound good?"

No need to let the punk know I only had the one pokemon.

The kid was pretty excited and agreed quickly. We moved over to the side of the road and separated by about fifty paces.

"Alright! This is what I'm gonna use in the next tournament, believe it!"

Oh great, I thought to myself, this brat thinks he deserves a catchphrase.

It was, and this was an opinion held by the majority of myself and my family including Uncle Bruno, an unfortunate side effect of the rise in pokemon training as a televised sporting event. The Personality Trainers as a fad. Pop Trainers was another term I'd heard thrown around. The trainers only in it for the fame and glory not the challenge or the thrill of battle or to bond with their partners.

This kid wanted to be one of those, someone cool with a catchphrase, beating down all comers with his...farfetch'd.

I blinked and the stupid looking bird with the leek and massive eyebrows was still sitting there right in front of me.

So dumb, it was holding the leek all wrong for staff combat, in fact how did these things even hold those with wings?

But I wasn't going to let this kid's...bizarre choice in pokemon throw me.

"Ajax lead with a fake out!" Ajax immediately responded, hands glowing orange as he leapt forward to clap his hands just in front of the farfetch'd.

"Far!" It cried in shock as it stumbled back from the shockwave.

"Tackle while it's stunned," I commanded lazily, honestly I was pretty sure Ajax could just handle this entire fight without any commands. He was almost ready to be tested for a black belt himself in regards to his forms and style.

The bird was sent flying by Ajax with the follow up and was...well honestly it was such a weird pokemon I wasn't sure how to gauge where it was on damage.

"Ah! Farfetch'd, use fury attack!"

"Fetch!" The stupid thing yelled as it launched forward with a flurry of blows from both its beak and its leek.

I didn't even need to command Ajax to dodge, he just moved his shoulders, head, and torso around the strikes before blurring with speed to appear behind the bird and slam a lightning fast mach punch into...anatomically speaking I'm not sure if that would be a kidney or the gizzard on a bird.

Oh well, the farfetch'd's normal-typing made that punch hurt a lot from the comically large eyes and scream of pain coming from its beak.

"I think you need to work on some defensive moves if you want to take on fighting-types, kid," I commented as Ajax continued to pick apart the bird without any input from myself.

"Sand attack and double team would be good places to start," The farfetch'd got tossed into the air by another tackle.

"He already knows sand attack! In fact! Sand attack!"

Unfortunately his pokemon was just about knocked out at that point so it moved far too sluggishly and Ajax interrupted the move by finishing it off with a firm bop to the top of the noggin.

"Your farfetch'd is an...interesting and...determined pokemon," I'd give him some credit there at least, "I could see it maybe giving some difficulties if your worked on his speed and versatility a bit."

The kid returned his pokemon with a sigh, "Thanks I guess..."

Oh crap it looked like I had broken the kid's spirit. Uggh I hate being nice but I couldn't let him leave like this.

"Hey, work on those two moves I told you as well as aerial ace and I think you could give a decent showing, maybe start taking some gym badges if your team covers for his weaknesses."

Oh Mew be damned the kid was like a freaking ping pong ball he just jerked right back into cheeriness.

"You really think so? I was hoping to catch a growlithe on this route to help against Erika in Celadon!"

That...wasn't the worst idea actually and I told him such. He handed over the prize money and left saying he'd take my advice to heart and would be back to beat me one day blah blah blah something something eternal rival. I think he said his name was Donovan? Derrick? There was a D in it.

Now I was really glad I was going to be heading over to Johto after I caught my starting team.

After his departure Ajax and I quickly set up camp and turned in for the night. Our first day on the road hadn't really given us any trouble, nor had it given us any special boon. Would it have been cool to have run into a mankey late to migrate to Mount Moon? Yeah. Would I have welcomed finding one of the rarer abra or one of the occasional swarms of invasive foreign pokemon that are occasionally seen near bigger cities and ports in Kanto? Yeah, I could have traded a buizel or linoone for some pretty interesting stuff this far from Hoenn and Sinnoh.

But you know what? I'd take a small victory.


End file.
